Renowned strategic affairs expert and advisor to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Deepak Vohra has said that, as the youngest nation in the world, India is unstoppable and its time in the world stage has come.
Delivering the 7th Professor Sarat Mahanta Memorial Lecture at the Royal Global University in Guwahati on Sunday evening, Mr Vohra said that, the world needs India more than India needs the world.
The former diplomat said India is well-poised to provide leadership to the world in meeting the primary challenges of health, climate instability and economic recovery through free and open seas that humankind is faced with today.
"The pace of change in geopolitics and geoeconomics is the fastest it has been in the last one hundred years. The much-hyped 'China dream' has faded and far from being a global development partner, China is now a 'universal threat'. Many developing nations, including those in India's neighbourhood, have woken up to this threat and want India to bail them out," he said.
Mr Vohra took the audience through the difficult years and decades since Independence when India had to beg for food grains and had to mortgage its gold reserves to the present when world leaders defer to India.
"We stumbled and fell when the pandemic hit us, but we picked ourselves up and tackled it head-on very successfully," Mr Vohra said.
He further said that India has successfully tackled the gargantuan health crisis posed by the Coronavirus, and will emerge as a health hyperpower.
"The world is now marvelling at our capacity to meet all ambitious targets, be it vaccinating our people or meeting green energy targets, ahead of schedule. Our country is getting ahead in hyper-technology that will drive the world. We have made tremendous strides in digitisation and have recorded the highest number of digital transactions in the world. We have the highest pace of constructing highways in the world and will achieve other social targets like supplying potable water to every household very soon," Mr Vohra said.
"We are Indians not because we live in India, but because India lives in us," Vohra said to thunderous applause from the audience comprising top state officials, politicians, academics, professionals and civil society leaders.
He added that Indians have to be patriotic and work unitedly to achieve the goals that the country has set for itself.
Chairman-cum-Managing Director of media conglomerate Pride East Entertainment Pvt Ltd, Riniki Bhuyan Sharma, spoke about her association with Prof Sarat Mahanta and his family while inaugurating the memorial lecture.
Recalling her association with Prof Mahanta, she paid tributes to his ideals and values.
Earlier, on behalf of the Prof Sarat Mahanta Foundation and Royal Global University, Dr Sabyasachi Mahanta and Ankur Pansari felicitated Deepak Vohra.
Assam Assembly Speaker Biswajit Daimary and cabinet minister Pijush Hazarika also spoke on the occasion.
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